Gregory Smoak | Professor
Greg Smoak
Professor of History
801/587-9575
CTIHB 313
About
Gregory E. Smoak is Professor of History at University of Utah where he specializes in American Indian, American Western, Environmental, and Public History. Between 2013 and 2023 he served as director of the University’s American West Center. He earned an MA at Northern Arizona University and a Ph.D. at the University of Utah, and has taught at Colorado State University and the University of Minnesota. Smoak is the editor of Western Lands, Western Voices: Essays on Public History in the American West (University of Utah Press, 2021) and the author of Ghost Dances and Identity: Prophetic Religion and American Indian Ethnogenesis in the Nineteenth Century (University of California Press, 2006) as well as a forthcoming environmental history of Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument (NPS). He has authored and/or directed numerous research projects for the United States National Park Service, including work for Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, Pipe Spring National Monument, and Zion National Park. His work with Indigenous Nations has included projects with the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, Navajo Nation, Big Sandy Rancheria of Western Mono Indians, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, and the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation. Smoak is a Past President of the National Council on Public History and has served on numerous committees for professional organizations including the NCPH, the Organization of American Historians, and the Western History Association.
-
PhD, University of Utah, 1999.
-
MA, Northern Arizona University, 1985.
-
BA, Florida Atlantic University, 1984.
The Indigenous and environmental history of the American West; Public history.
“Rural Utah at the Crossroads.” An Essay to Accompany the Utah Tour of the Smithsonian Museum on Main Street Exhibition Crossroads, co-authors Nathan Housely and Megan Weiss. Salt Lake City: Utah Humanities, 2023. https://www.utahhumanities.org/images/centerheritage/docs/XR_Utah_Rural_Crossroads_essay_lr.pdf
“Water is Life, Water is Power: The Confluence of Water, History, and the Public in Utah,” Utah Historical Quarterly 91 (Summer 2023): 198-211. https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/uip/uhq/article-abstract/91/3/198/381525/Water-Is-Life-Water-Is-Power-The-Confluence-of?redirectedFrom=fulltext
“Every History Has a Nature: Thoughts on Doing Public Environmental History,” The Public Historian 44 (August 2022): 7-21. https://online.ucpress.edu/tph/article/44/3/9/187929/Every-History-Has-a-NatureThoughts-on-Doing-Public
Western Lands, Western Voices: Essays on Public History in the American West. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2021. https://uofupress.com/books/western-lands-western-voices/
“Utah Water Ways.” An Essay to Accompany the Utah Tour of the Smithsonian Museum on Main Street Exhibition, Water Ways, and the Utah Humanities project “Think Water Utah.” Salt Lake City: Utah Humanities, 2020. https://www.utahhumanities.org/images/centerheritage/docs/TWU_UtahWaterWays_Essay_lr.pdf
Dibé Ch’é’nil –“Where the Sheep Were Let Out”: An Oral Historical and Ethnohistorical Study of the Pipe Spring Raid and Navajo-Mormon Relations in the 1860s and 1870s, for the National Park Service, CP-CESU Cooperative Agreement Number P14AC00921, 291 pp., May 2019.
“Reimagining ‘Wild Life’ on the Northern Plains: Lessons from the Little Bighorn,” in Leslie Miller and Louise Excell, eds., Reimagining a Place for the Wild. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2018, pp. 81-105. https://uofupress.com/books/reimagining-a-place-for-the-wild/
“The Great Basin,” in Frederick Hoxie, ed., Oxford Handbook of American Indian History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 377-94. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-american-indian-history-9780197522691?cc=us&lang=en&
“An Environmental History of Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument,” for the National Park Service, RM-CESU Cooperative Agreement Number H-1200090004, 357 pp., December 2015.
“Utah’s Journey Stories.” An Essay to Accompany the Utah Tour of the Smithsonian Museum on Main Street Exhibition, Journey Stories. Salt Lake City: Utah Humanities, 2014. https://www.utahhumanities.org/journeystories/journeys_essay_HL.pdf
“The Native West Before 1700,” in Gordon Bakken ed., The World of the American West. New York: Routledge, 2011, pp. 50-81. https://www.routledge.com/The-World-of-the-American-West/Bakken/p/book/9781032402604
“Beyond the Academy: Making the New Western History Matter in Local Communities.” The Public Historian 31 (November 2009): 85-89. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/tph.2009.31.4.85
“The Newe (the People) and the Utah Superintendency,” In: Dale L. Morgan, Shoshonean Peoples and the Overland Trail: Frontiers of the Utah Superintendency of Indian Affairs, 1849-1869, Richard L. Saunders, ed., Logan: Utah State University Press, 2007, pp. 33-55. https://upcolorado.com/utah-state-university-press/item/2251-shoshonean-peoples-and-the-overland-trail
Ghost Dances and Identity: Prophetic Religion and American Indian Ethnogenesis in the Nineteenth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520256279/ghost-dances-and-identity
“Fort Hall and the Ghost Dance Movements.” Idaho Yesterdays 47 (Fall/Winter 2006): 6-27, 72-73.
HIST 4360/6360 Careers in Public History
HIST 4380/6380 American Environmental History
HIST 4671/6671 American Indian History to 1850
HIST 4672/6672 American Indian History since 1850
HIST 7620 Colloquium in the American West
University Community Engaged Teaching and Scholarship Award, University of Utah, 2024.
Distinguished Faculty Service Award in the Humanities, College of Humanities, University of Utah, 2023.
Award of Excellence (Utah Humanities “Think Water Utah” Project), American Association for State and Local History, 2023.
Outstanding Achievement Award (Think Water Utah Partners) State Board of History and Utah Division of State History, 2022.
University Distinguished Graduate Student and Postdoctoral Mentor Award, The Graduate School, University of Utah, 2020.
Outstanding Contribution to State History (American West Center) Utah Division of State History, 2014.